From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <20AAD8EC-F932-4BFD-9056-04B15A337687@9srv.net> From: Anthony Sorace To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: multipart/signed; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1; boundary="Apple-Mail-6--781779058" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v936) Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 01:59:56 -0400 References: <20100325114948.GA7249@polynum.com> <20100325114948.GA7249@polynum.com> , Subject: Re: [9fans] Man pages for add-ons Topicbox-Message-UUID: f34e2524-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) --Apple-Mail-6--781779058 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Unix has two camps for approaching this problem /usr/local and /opt. While they're almost never followed well on modern unix systems, the idea is basically a global local overlay vs. a per-package overlay. The /usr/local approach takes all packages not part of the base system and creates a "local root", a global mirror of (roughly) the root file system. Those poor souls don't have bind to work with, so everything ends up "knowing" to look in /bin and /usr/local/bin, /etc and /usr/local/etc, and so on. Packages from multiple sources are all intermixed in one /usr/local, so you've basically got the base system vs. everything else. EBo's /sys_aps is basically a recreation of /usr/ local. The /opt model creates per-package trees under /opt, for example /opt/ SomePackage. Within, it gets a similar looking overlay, but specific to that package. It's then up to the user or site admin to determine which packages get installed. Based on a similar (but much shorter) conversation on inferno-list, a few of us are trying out this model for third-party packages within Inferno. The Plan 9 approach today is either install everything in / (/386/ bin, /sys/include, &c) or in your personal home dir and bind as needed. The later is irritating on multi-user systems, and the former can make maintenance a lot harder. Replica's -c and -s help, but it still requires more vigilance from the admin than it seems like it ought to. Personally, I've always preferred the /opt model, as it makes it easier to tell at a glance what's installed and to work with components individually. The (non-)overlay can get unwieldy on Unix, but our namespaces make that much easier for us. It also give both admins and users package-level control over what gets included. Like I said, I and a few others have started playing with this in Inferno. If it works reasonably there, I intend to try something similar in Plan 9. Anyone likes to beat me to it, I'd love to hear about your results. --Apple-Mail-6--781779058 content-type: application/pgp-signature; x-mac-type=70674453; name=PGP.sig content-description: This is a digitally signed message part content-disposition: inline; filename=PGP.sig content-transfer-encoding: 7bit -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) iEYEARECAAYFAkusTVwACgkQyrb52b5lrs6nKgCeOoIweCeJRnUjeibe/et0/6YZ 8nMAn0vZ7UZzQI8qzu6uDhkFfBzBaKlU =hft7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Apple-Mail-6--781779058--